Second Best Bed (1938) User Reviews

Not one of Travers best

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 24 December 2018]

This film,written by Ben Travers of Aldwych fame,got its first tv airing on TPTV. Tom Walls is twice the age of Jane Baxter but they get married despite the 26 year age gap.They always seem to be bickering.Walls gets involved in assault case when he shelters a young woman who loses her assault case against a local lothario.Baxter who had gone to Monte Carlo against Walls wishes,comes home and jumps to the wrong conclusion.However they are reonciled I am not particularly fond of Walls,particularly as here where he directs himself.In fact the only time I laughed was just before the end.If only Gordon Harker or Robertson Hare had been featured.

The Usual Nonsense

[richardchatten · 3/10 · 6 October 2019]

Tom Walls' direction had become slicker but the formula staler by the time of this late thirties adaptation of yet another Ben Travers marital farce, as usual set in the lap of luxury in which the old goat and the lovely Jane Baxter (in and out of a variety of elegant outfits) get married and then squabble for the next hour while Walls' camera occasionally pauses to linger upon the more nubile female cast members.

A floppy-haired Carl Jaffe is almost unrecognisable in his film debut as a romantic young Frenchman.